Integrity: An Essay on God

In this short essay I define an experientially-based concept of God
that can be shown to exist. I hope that others will find this idea as
powerful and rewarding as I do.

First, we will specify the domain or scope of the concept of
Universe. R. Buckminster Fuller wrote a definition of Universe
(Synergetics,
Macmillan Publishing Co., 1975, p.81)
that adequately delimits our problem-solving space:

Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's
consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only
partially overlapping experiences.

Aggregate means sum-totally but nonunitarily conceptual
as of any one moment. Consciousness means an awareness
of otherness. Apprehension means information furnished
by those wave frequencies tunable within man's limited sensorial
spectrum. Communicated means informing self or others.
Nonsimultaneous means not occurring at the same time.
Overlapping is used because every event has duration, and
their initiatings and terminatings are most often of different duration.
Neither the set of all experiences nor the set of all the words
used to describe them are instantly reviewable nor are they of the same
length. Experiences are either involuntary (subjective) or voluntary
(objective), and all experiences, both physical and metaphysical, are
finite because each begins and ends.

With this background I now present my current working definition
of God. God is the loving, superhuman, nonanthropomorphic,
intellectual integrity operative in Universe. Loving
refers to the interattractive and interaccommodative nature of
God's integrity. Superhuman means beyond any one human's
capabilities. Nonanthropomorphic means not having human
form or qualities. Intellectual refers to the faculty of
perceiving experiences and the relationships among them (such as the
facts of life). Integrity refers to the unity of the mutually
interaccommodative components in a system. Operative means
participating in the operation of a system.

To me it is patently clear that the God defined above exists. Every day
I find myself relying on the integrity of my understandings about
how Universe works. I confidently ride escalators, airplanes and
other ``feats of technology'' knowing that the principles upon which
they are based are quite reliable. The Universe does seem to have an
intellectual integrity which we humans are able to perceive (if only in
bits and pieces). Many books (especially those about Nature and Science)
disclose new insights into the nature of God. Finally, I'll note that
if Universe did not have integrity, logic and reason, it would be disorder
and chaos and unreliable.

In conclusion, the idea expounded here meets three criteria that I
think are crucial to any concept of God: a clear definition of terms,
evidence that proves that the defined concept occurs in Universe, and
applicability to the strategic guidance of humans in Universe. I don't
have space to expand on the later aspect, but I invite the curious reader
to explore the richness of this concept of God.